Posts Tagged ‘NRA’

Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist for more than a dozen years, has made a name for himself as a defender of social justice causes such as poverty, gender injustice and, in particular, the brutal mass murders that have taken place in Sudan.

Kristof is also well known among strong pro-Israel supporters as a Blame Israel Firster, who rarely misses an opportunity to bash Israel for all problems in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In June, 2010, Kristof wrote a column in the New York Times, “Saving Israel From Itself.” In 2011 he penned “Is Israel its own Worst Enemy?” In the latter, he claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s “hard lines on settlements” was like a “national suicide policy.” According to Kristof, nothing – not terrorism, not suicide bombing, not the slaughter of Jewish babies in their beds – “is more corrosive than Israel’s growth of settlements because they erode hope of a peace agreement in the future.”

M.J. Rosenberg is a former centrist who, over time, become increasingly obsessive and offensive regarding Israel. At one time Rosenberg worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. After his four year stint at AIPAC, Rosenberg bounced around Washington, D.C. working for various Democratic politicians and later worked as the policy director for the leftist think tank the Israel Policy Forum. Eventually, Rosenberg was hired by the radical left Media Matters for America, a George Soros-funded media attack-dog group whose snout is trained firmly on conservative media.

In early 2012, various writers for Media Matters were criticized for using such offensive terms as “Israel Firster” to describe strongly pro-Israel members of Congress. The “Israel Firster” appellation implied that those American politicians care more about Israel than they do about the U.S. Rosenberg was a repeat offender, using the Israel Firster term to attack pro-Israel politicians.

Media Matters came under increasing attack for what some saw as anti-Semitism. In particular, liberal Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz came out after Media Matters and M.J. Rosenberg with guns ablazing. Last spring he warned that Media Matters might cost President Obama this election, and urged the president to distance himself from the group.

“Rosenberg was an extremist,” Dershowitz told The Daily Caller. “He didn’t engage in careful, nuanced critiques of Israel, which is fine. He engaged in hyperbole, name-calling. He just hated, hated, hated, with a passion, almost an eroticized passion of anything associated with Israel. He was like a spurned lover — irrational.”

Many agreed Rosenberg had gone too far and he left Media Matters in April, 2012.

But Rosenberg hasn’t learned his lesson. He is still making remarkably provocative and offensive statements about Israel, and he is still capable of entangling President Obama in his escapades. As first reported in the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday, January 16, Kristof re-tweeted one of Rosenberg’s more juvenile and offensive – and there is already quite a low bar – tweet messages:

Rosenberg, who nurses a pathological grudge against the Jewish State, refers to AIPAC as being like a pig, and is crowing about what he sees as well-deserved insults by the president to AIPAC as well as to the National Rifle Association.

Most people understand that Rosenberg is unhinged when it comes to Israel and AIPAC. Most people – at least those with a public persona – would steer clear of embracing Rosenberg’s effluvia. But not Nick Kristof. Oh no, Kristof takes Rosenberg’s “Pig Lobbies” tweet and sends it out to his 1,373,272 Twitter followers, thereby dramatically amplifying the audience for the message. Rosenberg has only 14,918 followers.

Unlike most Twitter users, Kristof does not have the phrase, “retweets do not constitute endorsements” on his profile page. Of course, it’s hard to come to anything but the opposite conclusion in this case.

I received an email from the folks at Gun Appreciation Day – which takes place January 19, unless there’s a massacre.

“We’re marching towards Gun Appreciation Day full steam ahead, and already the liberal gun control crowd is using every trick in the book to try and stop us.”

Ah, the liberal gun control crowd, those conniving bastards refusing to be shot on sight by a good old American armed militia, as it is specifically being commanded in the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Supreme Court and I differ on what the above statement means in reality. In my opinion, this is the foundation for a citizen’s army, which is ready to stand up to an invader from overseas or from Canada and Mexico. Should those red coats dare come down into these United States once more, thousands of citizens would swiftly pull their muskets off the wall, grab the bags of fire powder and iron balls, as well as their trusted muzzle loader, and rush off to defend our farms and plantations.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, decided the same Second Amendment means you can sling an AKA 47 on one shoulder and a bazooka on the other, as long as you can show a library card with your name on it at the counter.

The Gun Appreciation folks are circulating their email around because they need your financial support in the war against liberal haters: “No matter if you can afford $5 or $500, anything and everything will make a difference.”

I don’t appreciate guns. Secure in my masculinity, I have never seen a need for either a sports car or a gun. In boot camp I schlepped around a Belgian FM rifle that had to be cleaned daily, whether I had used it or not. I nicknamed my rifle Ginger—it failed so many inspections, I started to believe those red spots were the result of shame as much as rust.

Ginger weighed a ton and fired a huge caliber bullet, with the recoil of an elephant gun. She was more like those patriotic muskets than the rapid fire monsters lonely American young adults are using these days to reduce our student population.

Yesterday, I also received an email from the National Rifle Association (why am I on all those email lists I have no idea), reacting—quite furiously, by the way—to the passage of a bill titled S. 2230 in New York

Apparently, what bugs the NRA are the undemocratic aspects of the way NY State passes its bills.

Join the club… In NY State we’re not so much a democracy as a plutocracy. The only way you can get rid of a NY State politician is if they become president of the United States, or gets caught doing something unspeakable on Twitter. Otherwise they’re there forever – because we, the majority of the folks in their districts, keep voting them in.

Anyway, the NRA is upset that S. 2230 was “hammered out in a backroom in Albany, was quickly drafted and released 20 minutes prior to the Senate vote. It passed as the clock ticked toward midnight.”

So? Over here we call it standard legislative process…

And what is it that S. 2230 actually does?

It lowers New York’s magazine capacity limit from ten rounds to seven.

That means that after a kid living in his mom’s basement has finished shooting into a crowd of students seven times, he has to pause and reload.

Ah, the humanity…

“It also greatly expands the state’s existing ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms, and will require New York gun owners to undergo background checks on ammunition purchases,” bewails the NRA.

If you ask me, this will actually mean great relief for UPS drivers, who won’t have to schlep quite as many cases of “ammo” to Joe’s hut in the woods, right above the high school building.

“These gun control schemes have failed in the past and will have no impact on public safety and crime,” argues the NRA.

According to data from The Violence Policy Center, these are the states with the highest death rates in the nation: